2019-10-12 - Get Some Rest

The hospital is mostly a ghost town. A huge percentage of the staff is out sick. Since a sizable portion of the TOWN is also out with the flu, it means they aren't breaking their legs or whatever, so there's not even a big patient turnout. A few beds are taken by people with the flu, and the waiting room has people who tend to use the ER in lieu of a regular doctor. Hailey is among those sticking it out in this skeleton crew, loitering at the nurse's station with a facemask hanging down below her chin and the sort of general weariness of a person who's PROBABLY been under the weather for a few days at least.

Cassidy drags herself into the ER reception and to the desk. She has on huge lens sunglasses to hide what are probably bloodshot eyes with heavy bags beneath then. She has a dour expression otherwise with a downturn of her mouth. Her hair is disheveled and staticy, like she just fell out of bed and crawled her warm corpse here. Nose is red from wiping and blowing. Something that is not helping her cause is a huge travel mug of coffee and the faint smell of stale cigarettes coming off her oversized sweat shirt.

"Hi. I need to see someone. I don'r have a PCP yet." She places her government-issue health insurance card on the counter and slides it forward.

There's totally paperwork to fill out. A nurse pushes a clipboard back across the counter at Cassidy with a world-weary, "Fill this out and someone'll be with you shortly," before she goes back to whatever she's doing (playing Minesweeper).

Hailey side-eyes this exchange from where she's sipping out of a paper coffee-cup and supposedly filling out paperwork of her own (scribbling her so-called signature on things). "Is it the flu?" she guesses - not really creeping too far out on that limb - her smile slanting sympathetically across at Cassidy. And the paperwork.

Cassidy takes the clipboard with a heavy sigh and look of resignation. She knew she'd have to do the medical history stuff, but still. What a pain.

She steps off to the side and begins scribbling the answers with fast bubbly handwriting, scrawling with her left hand. "I guess? It's a truck driving through my brain is what it is."

Head tilting to the side, Hailey considers Cassidy for a short spell, pitching forward a little so she can take a look at the first scribblings on the clipboard. Fortunately, she does all this while wearing her scrubs and labcoat, so she's at least obviously some sort of hospital personnel, and not just some nosy rando. "It's probably the flu," she decides after frowning a minute. To the admitting nurse, she adds, "I can take her," and starts toward some little curtained alcove in an adjacent room with a hand waving toward Cassidy to follow. "I can see you, come this way."

Cassidy delays a bit because she's still answering the questions, but in an absent minded fashion begins to move and follow, huge bug eye lenses still pointed at the clipboard.

"I left my coffee out there." She shrugs. "Whatever."

By the time they get to where they are going, Cass just has a couple lines left and she fills those in. Emergency contact number is listed as '9-1-1, they know me'. She hads it off to Hailey. "Thanks," followed by a gurgly nasal inhale.

Hailey's job really isn't to read people's paperwork. There are other people who get paid for that, but they're probably out with the flu, so she gives it a quick glance that makes her laugh quietly through her nose - which is also slightly congested, but she's powering on through! "They know you? That's ominous." Brows twitch, then she drops the clipboard on some convenient surface and pats the end of the paper-sheeted bed, bringing over a stool for herself. "I'm Hailey, by the way." The labcoat says 'H. Stevenson, M.D.' so she probably means 'Doctor Stevenson' but whatever. "Tell me where it hurts, Miss - " THIS is why she checked the clipboard! " - Bennet."

"Everywhere in my face," Cassidy answers with an ugh and a slump into a chair, sprawling out with extremeties limp. It's hard to see where she is looking with those huge glasses on, but her face is pointed down toward the corner of the floor.

"That's an apt descriptor." Hailey tucks her little masky thing up over the lower half of her own face, successfully hiding the quirky smile she wears to appreciate the explanation of what ails poor Cassidy. "Can you, ahm - with the glasses?" She demonstrates, pretending to take off glasses she's not wearing, then warms up her stethoscope and gets the blood pressure cuff and other doctor-stuff.

Cassidy reaches for her glasses and slides them off with a lethargic motion of her arm, which immediately flops back to her side. Her eyes are puffy and red and there is an irritated tightness around her eyes and slight purse of her lips - neither of which are directed at the doctor, but the circumstances itself.

"And apparently the Safeway is out of chicken soup."

Hailey nods a sad little nod. "So I've heard. Apparently, you can't get NyQuil at the pharmacy in town, either. If you're feeling especially terrible, I can write you a prescription for cough syrup with codeine, but I wouldn't recommend taking it if you need to be upwardly mobile at all." She's probably smiling sympathetically behind the mask, just based on the crinkle at the corners of her eyes.

At least the physical that Cassidy is about to get will be quick and painless! "How long have you been feeling it?" she asks in between the poking and prodding.

"Couple days." Cassidy answers before taking an exaggerated inhale of gurgly snotty loveliness - just to prove how poor and sick she is. "I need to be cured in 12 hours. Think you can manage that?"

The last statement comes across less bossy but in a resigned tone of acceptance that the exact opposite is going to happen. But you don't ever get what you don't ask for, right.

"No drugs. I need my wits. Justice doesn't sleep." she probably interrupts something important Hailey is trying to do when she reaches down to her purse and takes out her phone. She sits back up, "sorry" and begins texting but is otherwise still.

The degree of positivism and cheer that comes out of Hailey is completely at odds with the answer that she gives regarding the likelihood of a 12-hour cure: "No~!" She shakes her head and everything, ponytail a-sling in the process. "If you just started feeling poorly?" She quiets when Cassidy reaches for her phone, failing to follow-up on her own prodding comment on account of she's the sort of super-polite person that doesn't want to interrupt a text!

Or she's over here fuming about people being rude. It's hard to tell, with the mask on. Regardless, Cassidy's vitals are all recorded and stuff, and she waits on her stool for the moment, hum-de-dum.

"If I just started feeling poorly..." Cassidy says in prompting fashion as one eyebrow lifts to indicate she is listening, while rapid thumbs of fury continue to hammer out texts.

Her eyes lift from the screen to the masked doctor. "I'm listening" she promises.

Oh, "Then you're in for a bad five to seven days." Hailey puts that out with an eeky face, like she's really sorry to be the bearer of bad news here. "We could do a throat swab to make sure it's not something like strep, but I'm almost positive that you have the flu. Sore throat, dizziness, stomach upset," HORRIBLE MURDEROUS NIGHTMARES, "cough and headache are in your future. Really, the best I can suggest? Drink plenty of fluids and try to rest."

Her eyes hitch on Cassidy's phone, then lift back to its owner. "Justice may not sleep, but you really should." She shrugs an apology.

"Yeah, well, if our friends at the GHPD had any fucking initiative maybe I would..." Cassidy mutters as she rolls her eyes at her phone and tosses it into her purse. "Losers."

She fixes Hailey with an inscrutable stare. Then her blue eyes shift away and she leans forward to hook her bag onto her arm. "Okay. Thanks Doc."

"Their job has to be difficult right now? What with - " STFU Hailey. She clips off the comment in favor of throwing her latex gloves into a nearby bin, drumming up a socially correct smile: patient, sympathetic, all the things good doctors wear in their expressions when they're not about to go off on a tear about ghosts and serial killers. "You're welcome, Miss Bennet. Just stop by the front desk on your way out, and they'll have your paperwork to sign. And I'll write you that prescription. If you don't fill it, you don't fill it, 'kay?"

^ The reason this country has an opioid crisis, right there.

"Yeah. They're working themselves ragged." Cassidy says with no slight amount of irony in her voice. She waves a hand at the prescription offer. "I'll sign out up front. Thanks." And she begins to walk out.